Lotte Co., Ltd. is a multinational food and shopping corporation with headquarters in South Korea and Japan. Lotte was first established in June 1948 in Tokyo, by Shin Kyuk-Ho. From Tokyo, Lotte expanded into South Korea with the establishment of Lotte Confectionary Co., Ltd in Seoul on April 3, 1967 and eventually grew to become Korea's eighth largest business conglomerate.

Lotte Group consists of over 60 business units employing 60,000 people engaged in such diverse industries as candy manufacturing, beverages, hotels, fast food, retail, financial services, heavy chemicals, electronics, IT, construction, publishing, and entertainment. Lotte's major operations are overseen by Shin's family in Japan and South Korea, with additional businesses in China, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, India, USA, Russia, Philippines, Pakistan and Poland (Lotte bought Poland's largest candy company Wedel from Kraft Foods in June 2010). Today, Lotte is the largest confectionery manufacturer in South Korea, and is the third largest in Japan behind Meiji Seika and Ezaki Glico in terms of sales revenue when only the sales of Lotte's confectioneries are counted.

Lotte's first company was founded in June 1948 in Tokyo, by Shin Kyuk-Ho, two years after he graduated from Waseda Jitsugyo high School (早稲田実業学校). Originally called Lotte Co., Ltd, the company has grown from selling chewing gum to children in post-war Japan to becoming a major multinational corporation.

The source of the company's name is neither Korean nor Japanese, but German. Shin was impressed with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) and named his newly founded company Lotte after the character Charlotte[8][9] in the novel ("Charlotte" is also the name of a new brand of deluxe movie theatres run by Lotte). Lotte's current marketingslogan in Japan is "The sweetheart of your mouth, Lotte" (お口の恋人,ロッテ,Okuchi no koibito, Rotte?).